by Xochitl Campos
Daily Lobo
Jonathan Kozol said he is tired of seeing children in inner-city schools treated like machines.
"In a lot of schools, they don't refer to children as children anymore," he said. "They train our kids to give the answers, the predictable answers."
Kozol spoke to about 750 people at Woodward Hall on Tuesday promoting his book Letters to a Young Teacher.
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Many of Kozol's books are used in the College of Education, said Leslie Chamberlin, director of the college's library.
"I really think that he is the social conscience for education," she said. "He makes it sound that to be a good teacher you almost have to be
subversive."
Letters to a Young Teacher is based on a year of correspondence between Kozol and a teacher in Boston's inner-city, Kozol said.
"I got to love that classroom and see the children grow in their achievement levels, even though the teacher never taught a test-prep question," he said. "She refused to show her 6-year-olds how to inflate their test scores, but to learn for the sake of learning."
Kozol said teachers spend too much time preparing students
for tests.
"I ask teachers why they are so demoralized, and the first thing they say is, 'This miserable testing mania is turning my school into a test-prep factory,'" he said.
Kozol said inner-city schools are overcrowded, and it's hard for teachers to give students the attention
they need.
"If a very small class size is good for the son of an American president, then it is good for the poorest child of the poorest child right here in New Mexico," he said.
Minority students are trained only to fill entry-level jobs, Kozol said.
"You see what business needs from these kids - that these kids need to be trained to fill the jobs that business has available," he said. "They would never see this in the suburbs."
Kozol's work gives a voice to America's children, said student Kenneth Moore, who is studying early childhood education.
"He is speaking for the sacredness of children, and it gets lost in the government and the media," he said. "He goes into these places where the children are not seen. There is this innocence of childhood that they
shut down."
